Bad faith in Hong Kong

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Recent determinations on registration of trademarks in bad faith shed light on the rules pertaining to standards of honesty, as Kenny Leung reports.

Section 11(5)(b) of the Trade Marks Ordinance provides that a trademark shall not be registered if the application for registration of it is made in bad faith. Recently, four trademark cases relating to the issue of bad faith have been decided.

The first case concerned Pending Application No.300662751 for the device mark consisting of symmetrical patterns around the inner part of a circle and the letter ‘V’ at the centre (see Fig 1 above right). This mark was filed by a furniture company in Shantou City, Guangdong province, China and the opponent was Gianni Versace SpA of Italy.

Based on the following observations, the hearing officer was satisfied that the Section 11(5)(b) objection was sustained.